


Blank Slate

by KitsunePhantom09



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: AU-gust 2020, M/M, Soulmates AU, lol first entry for AU-gust and I love it, ygocollablove
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitsunePhantom09/pseuds/KitsunePhantom09
Summary: Everyone has a mark signifying their soulmate.Yusei doesn't.
Relationships: Jack Atlas/Fudou Yuusei
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33
Collections: AUgust 2020





	Blank Slate

**Author's Note:**

> I have been dragged back into Kingcrab hell and I can't fathom why I ever left

‘Soulmate’ and its plural were not words Yusei liked to hear, but he heard them everyday of his life. Everyone was obsessed with finding their soulmate, the person who shared a mark with them. A pair, rarely more, of marks that were similar enough to be obviously connected but different to represent the other. Soulmates weren’t always romantic, but there was some sense of wholeness in being around them, interacting with them.

So it stung like hell for Yusei to hear all about it when he was unmarked. The mark should have shown up on his thirteenth birthday, setting him the goal of finding someone with his own mark. But it never happened, his skin entirely free of any marking. He spent the following five years in a spiral trying to figure out what was wrong with him, why he didn’t have a mark. A spiral fueled by the mockery and unhelpful pity from everyone around him.

It was when he was eighteen that he managed to crawl out of that abyss of a pit – the day he got a tattoo. Tattoos weren’t illegal, but with the way society so intensely frowned on it, it might as well have been. Having just the one – a small ice dragon on his left bicep – made everyone’s idea of him change almost instantly. Everyone who knew he didn’t have a soulmate mark was revolted that he’d do such a thing, even if they tried to be sympathetic.

Seeing that made something in Yusei change, hardening and freezing over. So he got more tattoos, more and more to cover as much skin as his pain tolerance allowed him to. Dragons, unicorns, all sorts of mythical beasts around his arms, crawling up his neck, leaking onto his chest and shoulder blades. Wings, feathers, and birds all over his back. Darker imagery down his legs. Symbols of sorrow and rage across his chest and abdomen.

Only two spots were (mostly) untouched – his face, which held only a geometric yellow line from the bottom of his eye to under his jaw, and a single spot right above his heart. Getting a tattoo across the face hurt more than he’d expected it to, but he wanted something particularly flashy to put over his heart. He didn’t know what he wanted it to symbolize yet, but needed to be the most intricate and hard-to-miss tattoo he had.

Every new tattoo made everyone look down on him more and more, but made Yusei feel more and more in control. He didn’t need some inexplicable mark on his body to feel like a person, like his life was worth something. He didn’t need to be handed a destiny, he’d make his own. Once he inked the blank spot over his heart, his personal ‘fuck you’ to society and the universe at large would be complete.

Then, that spot over his heart started to hurt. It would turn bright red and ache fiercely at random, lasting from anywhere between only half an hour to nearly a week. Yusei almost immediately knew what was up, that his body was somehow trying to form a soulmate mark, and his gut reaction was to prevent it. Damn mark was a decade overdue and the absolute hell that lateness had thrown him into; why should he have anything to do with it now? But even as he actively increased his search for a good tattoo to cover the spot, something in him rose back from wherever he buried it, a glimmer of hope and joy that he could have his own soulmate, his own mark.

Yusei was quick to shove it back in the hole it crawled out of.

After the episodes of pain began, strange dreams started haunting him. At first, just emotions would linger from them – feelings of safety, security, fondness. Those emotions grew stronger and stronger, and it would take more and more effort to forget them. Suddenly, the way people talked about their soulmates started making more sense. The way the dreams left him feeling like he’d recovered something he hadn’t realized he’d been missing, cured a yearning he didn’t know he had. Of being loved in a way he could scarcely describe.

Then it escalated to more physical feelings. Like he had someone’s eyes on him shortly after waking up, the ghost of a pair of hands running down his chest and legs. Lips gently kissing their way across his collarbone and up his throat. A broad chest beneath Yusei’s own hands. The smell of fresh coffee in his nose, the taste of something spicy on his tongue. He was waking up every morning in a lustful haze, desperately hard and so deeply longing for whoever was on the other end of this soul tether.

Yusei hated it. He hated the feelings, emotional and physical. He despised how he felt so attached to this total stranger. He loathed the fact that he wanted to meet them, to know them, to be with them. He had gone so long thinking no such connection was there for him, inside him, and suddenly he blindsided with one. It felt like some sick divine prank or the lowest insult, and Yusei was not going to take it lying down.

Every morning, Yusei would look into the mirror to properly see all his ink. It was an old habit, one he’d adopted after the first couple of tattoos and just never shook off. Back then, it was to marvel at them, then later it was to reaffirm that he was in control. Now, it was just him looking them over, just in case something new showed up.

And it did. That blank space above his heart was filled in with what could only be his soulmate mark. A bright red heart littered with cracks, bearing an elegant crown of orange fire tilted to the right. At first, all Yusei could do was stare, gently running his fingertips over it. When he put his entire hand over it, it almost felt like his hand was over two hearts, his own and one that was beating just out of sync.

Then an unholy rage took root in him, burrowed straight into Yusei’s very core. He stormed from the bathroom and into the kitchen to grab the first sharp knife he caught sight of. Back to the mirror, he poised the blade over the heart, ready and willing to stab and slice and cut it to ribbons. He didn’t want this, he didn’t need it, so he was going to be rid of it.

Something flickered in the mirror, catching Yusei’s eyes. He looked up…and froze. Someone was standing right behind him, their hands reaching around to hold his own curled around the knife. It was a ghostly image, milky white and almost entirely see-through, and he couldn’t feel any weight to their grip around his hands. He could ignore this thing. Ignore it and keep going and get rid of this godforsaken mark before it had the chance to ruin him.

The eyes of the figure bore into Yusei’s and a wave of desperation washed over him. “ _Don’t do this_ ,” the figure seemed to say. “ _Please._ ”

Yusei wanted to snap at it. Wanted to tell it to fuck off back into the ether or wherever it came from. That this was his life and he wasn’t going to bow down to the random-ass whimsical ‘destiny’ the universe decided to dump onto him. He was going to tear this thing off and take control back like it had been for the past ten years since the universe decided to ignore him.

He didn’t do any of those things.

Under the sorrowful gaze of what Yusei could only assume to be his soulmate, the rage withered away and gave its space to the decade’s worth of sadness, resentment, and self-loathing he’d been bottling up and storing where no one would see it. His hands started to shake, and soon the knife left his grip to clatter to the tile floor. Yusei would follow it, sinking down to his knees as powerful sobs racked his body.

Yusei didn’t know what he wanted anymore. Did he want his soulmate to leave him alone, or did he truly crave their presence beside him? Did he really want to carve the heart off his chest or was it the ultimate addition to his collection? What were his real desires – the ones brought to him by the mark or the ones born of the darkness from so long ago? It felt like something was writhing in his chest, thrashing and clawing at anything and everything.

He hadn’t realized he was falling asleep until the specter’s form began to solidify. Strong arms wrapped around him and pulled him close into a warm embrace. “ _I’m right here, love,_ ” they murmured. “ _You’re not alone anymore. I’m here._ ” Yusei was polarized between snuggling into the embrace and shoving the specter away. Between just accepting the words of comfort and throwing them back with as much venom as he could muster.

He did neither, simply cried even in his dreams as the turmoil within him grew in size and intensity. It felt like it was going to tear him apart from the inside, tear him apart of his seams. Was that what he wanted? To be torn asunder and tossed into the void of nothingness death promised so absolutely?

The arms around him tightened and the specter pressed a kiss to the top of Yusei’s head. “ _No, love, no, don’t think like that,_ ” they said. “ _This conflict isn’t worth your life._ ” Yusei curled up in his soulmate’s arms, still shuddering. “ _I’m sorry you went so long without me, but I’m here now and I love you._ ”

“Do you?” Yusei asked, his voice broken and quiet. “Do you really, or is that just the mark talking?”

Warm feelings of fondness, safety, and something a bit hotter flooded Yusei’s body. “ _That is not my mark speaking for me,_ ” the specter said. “ _I have never made a habit of letting others speak for me, and this is no exception._ ”

Yusei squirmed in the specter’s hold. “But you haven’t even met me!” he shouted. The specter reluctantly let go. “How can you love someone you haven’t met?”

“ _Does this not count?_ ” the specter asked. “ _I have met you. I have been meeting you for some time now, ever since the mark on my chest started to appear. Perhaps we haven’t met physically, not officially, but we know one another._ ” They reached out, beckoning Yusei to return to their arms.

Yusei stayed just out of reach. “We haven’t met in real life,” he restated. “What if the real me is someone you can’t stand? Someone you can barely look at? What if the real me isn’t who you think I am?”

The specter seemed to smile softly. “ _I_ _can see you_ _right now. Black hair with golden streaks, beautiful azure eyes…_ ” The specter slowly motioned down Yusei’s body. “ _Gorgeous tan skin covered in such intricate designs._ ” The offer to return was extended again. “ _I see you, love. I see you for who you are and I want you._ ”

His soulmate could see him so clearly and wasn’t disgusted? Why were they so accepting? Why couldn’t Yusei see them like they could see him? “Why…” was all his tired voice could force out. “Why…why…why!” Yusei clawed at his head and his heart. “Why?!”

The specter lurched forward and grabbed his arms. “ _No! Don’t you dare hurt yourself!_ ” They pulled Yusei and pressed him against their chest. “ _I can fathom your pain, love; I felt it too. You’ve spent so long without a mark, without a soulmate, and you did your best to adjust in a world where it’s all anyone speaks of. You wore you down_ _to the point that you don’t know how to respond to the sudden appearance and connection._ ”

Yusei was motionless and wide-eyed; somehow, the idea that his soulmate might have suffered the same way he did had escaped him. His soulmate went on, “ _Maybe I didn’t go down that path, but I can understand that pain. I can understand why you resent the mark for appearing now. But please, love, please give me a chance to make it right._ ”

Yusei didn’t respond right away, but ever so slowly, raised his arms to return the embrace. A chance, a single chance, just to see what he had been left out on. He…he could do that, if not for himself than for his soulmate’s sake.

It wasn’t often that Yusei simply sat out in the sun like this, his arms and chest bared for all to see. The park was always a relaxing place to be, even if he kept getting filthy looks from anyone who happened upon him. Normally he donned his favorite jacket and gloves when he went out – telling society to fuck off was nice and all, but he couldn’t always handle the constant disruptions of strangers telling him how vile he was for ruining his skin like he had.

Every now and again, Yusei would put a hand over his mark and feel his soulmate’s heartbeat, how powerful and warm it was. He was waiting patiently for that soulmate to arrive in the park, their designated first meeting place. To think that the one he was bound to was already so close sent shivers up and down his spine, but it also made him angry – so close and yet the universe couldn’t be arsed to give them their marks on time. But every time his anger surfaced, his mark would warm up and radiate comfort to soothe him.

Noon had come and gone before his mark would heat up like never before, startling Yusei out of his dozing. He sat up properly to rub at the mark when two arms wrapped around his chest and pulled him back. “Guess who, love,” his soulmate murmured. Yusei twisted around to look. Tall and blonde with alabaster skin and shining violet eyes, his soulmate smiled down at him with what Yusei could only hopefully describe as love.

“Hi,” Yusei breathed. He stood up from the bench and walked around it to stand in front of his soulmate. Suddenly, not wearing anything over his tattoos made him feel self-conscious and he rubbed at his arms.

“You don’t need to hide them from me, love,” the blonde said. He took Yusei’s hands into his own and moved them to properly view his chest and arms. His gaze lingered on the crowned heart, and his smile grew. “Is that me, then?” He brushed his fingertips against it and delightful shocks danced across Yusei’s nerves, making him gasp and squirm.

The blonde released Yusei’s hands and moved to take off his own white coat and undo his shirt. Yusei almost marveled at the unblemished skin, but his eyes were immediately drawn to the single image over the blonde’s heart, mirroring his own. With a halo of stars above it and tilting to the left, there was a heart made of mismatched metal parts, most of which were rusted. Yusei reached up and touched the mark as it called to him and he felt his soulmate inhale sharply.

Yusei lowered his arm, only to have his hands reclaimed by the blonde’s. “So, do you think you can give this a go, Yusei?” he asked.

“Y-yeah,” Yusei replied. “I…I think I can…Jack.”


End file.
